Exhibition: Reanimating Cultural Heritage in Sierra Leone

12 January 2012

A multimedia exhibition featuring
film, images and rarely seen cultural objects from Sierra Leone that explores the role
cultural heritage can play in reanimating post-conflict and developing societies
opens at UCL this week.

The ‘Reanimating Cultural Heritage in Sierra Leone’ exhibition marks
both the culmination of a three-year research project funded by the UK’s Arts
and Humanities Research Council and led by Dr Paul Basu, UCL Institute of
Archaeology, and the launch of an innovative digital heritage resource which
provides access to collections across a number of different museums in the UK
and Sierra Leone.

Building on research in
anthropology, museum studies, informatics and beyond, the project considers how
objects that have become isolated from the oral and performative contexts that
originally animated them can be reanimated in digital space alongside
associated images, video clips, sounds, texts and other media - and thereby be
given new life.

Discussing the thinking behind the
exhibition, Dr Paul Basu said: “When you see a Sierra Leonean object like a mask
in a museum collection it’s static, it’s a dead object. But those masks were
part of a living, colourful, musical dance tradition.

There’s a bigger aim as well – what role can cultural heritage have in reanimating society more broadly? By bringing the collections and that heritage back to life in an engaging way, our bigger hope is that it will contribute to a broader societal reanimation

Dr Paul Basu

“We’ve been
working with partners in Sierra
Leone to create short video documentaries
about all kinds of things relating to the country’s cultural heritage. Many of
those videos literally reanimate some of those museum collections. Reconnecting
an object with the video then brings that object back to life to some degree.

“There’s a
bigger aim as well – what role can cultural heritage have in reanimating
society more broadly? By bringing the collections and that heritage back to
life in an engaging way, our bigger hope is that it will contribute to a
broader societal reanimation.”

The exhibition is split across two
sites at UCL. In UCL’s North Cloisters is a vibrant display of large format
photographs documenting different aspects of Sierra
Leone’s cultural heritage, alongside an exhibition of
iconic objects from Sierra Leone
from the collections of the British Museum and Sierra Leone National
Museum.
This includes displays of traditional masks associated with the female Bondo or
Sande initiation society, rarely seen stone ‘nomoli’ sculptures, and magical
garments worn by the Kamajor militia during Sierra Leone’s recent civil war.

In the North Lodge at the main
entrance to UCL on Gower Street
is an audio-visual installation, showing a continuous loop of short
documentaries made by the project and its Sierra Leonean partners. From different
music, dance and masquerade traditions to weaving and basket-making, these
provide a glimpse into the wealth of Sierra Leone’s little-known culture
and heritage. These displays are accompanied by various panels describing the
project, its objectives and activities in greater depth.

An associated event will be taking
place between 17:30 and 20:00 on 2 February in the Old Refectory, UCL.
Speakers include Paul Basu, Ruth Phillips, Bill Hart, Zachary Kingdon, and Sierra Leone’s Director of Cultural Affairs,
Fodah Jalloh, and H.E. Eddie Turay, Sierra Leone’s
High Commissioner in the UK.

Links:

Exhibition details:

Location:
North Cloisters and North Lodge, UCL , Gower Street, London WC1E 6BTDates: 9
January – 17 February 2012Opening times:
North Cloisters (Mon-Fri: 09:00-22:00; Sat-Sun 11:00-20:00); North Lodge
(Mon-Fri: 09:00-17:00) The exhibition is
free and open to the public.